It feels like I’m writing after a long time.
Actually, my priorities have been quite varied in the past few months, mostly focussing on my technical expertise. But last week my team had a pretty good retrospective session where I picked up nice clues and suggestions, so I thought of sharing my 2-cents with you all.
Retrospectives actually bring a lot of memories or to say refresh your past memories indirectly. The topics that are discussed in those sessions are mostly the same that you have been encountering from the start of your career,
- How can we (as a team) be more effective?
- What are we doing right?
- What are we doing wrong?
- How do we maintain the quality and yet stay flexible?
- and yada yada…
And everything that is discussed is a tradeoff. And I think, team retrospective is just a way to keep those things in check.
So whatever I said so far is strictly from the team’s perspective.
But there is another side to a well functioning team.
The individual side.
Individuals are not driven by quality or effectiveness or any of the things that are discussed in the retrospective. Those things work at the team level but not at the individual level. Individuals are driven by emotions.
Sometimes, there is deep-rooted doubts/confusions/hesitations/hatred/malice etc… that doesn’t necessarily affect the team’s productivity in the short-run but could disrupt the team’s environment. And it is very important to take care of it. After all, we are all emotional beings.
These emotions must be kept in check. And no one could do that other than the individuals themselves.
That’s where the FEEDBACK comes in.
Table of Contents
My Experience With Different Feedback Styles
Over time I have been part of many different teams and have experienced quite different ways through which the feedback is exchanged.
Form Based Anonymous Feedback – The worst form of feedback
In my opinion, this is the worst form of feedback. You create a google form with some fields and share it with all the team members. You add the option of anonymous and that enables people to give the feedback anonymously.
If you are practising this type of feedback then I would encourage you to stay away from it.
These are the reasons why:
- Encouraging Dismissive Rationalization: Every individual has a self-image. Even the most impartial and selfless individuals also have a self-image and would be dismissive of the feedback if they don’t know where it is coming from. Let’s say you get 5 encouraging points and one constructive, without knowing where is this coming from, you would be quick to dismiss it.
- Another facet of this is that you lose scope for exploring the feedback. As there is no one to talk to.
For ex – you get feedback saying, you need to work on quality.
(Maybe it is attached with a specific scenario where your work lacked in quality, like – you wrote a shitty code that day which lead the team’s code quality down).
But ask yourself, is this going to help you in any way? I don’t think this kind of feedback is useful for anyone.
I mean, yeah maybe, you wrote shitty code in that one occasion but I’m sure there is a story behind that which you need to explore with that individual. Without exploring the area where it is coming from you are losing on the scope for improvement.
It opens up more questions than it answers. It would have been much better if this conversation would have been face-to-face in person. Then there would have been an opportunity for the receiver to explore this further by asking the appropriate questions.
- Another facet of this is that you lose scope for exploring the feedback. As there is no one to talk to.
- Promotes Mistrust: When constructive feedback is anonymous, it raises more questions about the motive behind it. Mixed with the internal biases this could lead to mistrust in the workplace.
- Decreasing Moments Of Encouragement: Not only does positive anonymous feedback rob the receiver of a valuable learning opportunity, but it also steals the chances for meaningful and positive interactions.
Form-Based Non-annonymous Feedback
This is still better than the anonymous feedback but it still suffers most of the points that we discussed above. One thing that it clearly lacks is enabling colleagues to have meaningful interactions and chance for exploration.
As soon as you send a feedback form to the person, you think your work is done and now it is the responsibility of the person to provide you with the feedback. Most of the time the feedback does not come in timely.
Another thing is that you lose effective 2-way communication. You lose the opportunity to ask meaningful questions related to the feedback and ultimately that feedback is not much of a help.
In-Person Feedback: The Best Form Of Feedback
This is my preferred way of feedback. This helps you to explore every bit of the feedback and make sure you understand and apply it correctly. There are many hidden aspects and benefits of it:
The fear of being judged fades away: Everyone wants to please each other :p and that stops us from giving constructive feedback. You fear that the other person will judge you in a bad way. But ask yourself, is this healthy. The answer is always no. In a team, there should not be any hesitation among the team members. The team is supposed to be transparent and open to all. When you start receiving the feedback face to face the fear of judgement starts fading away. Sure at first, it will be uncomfortable but then it becomes second nature.
Opportunity to know more about self from senior members of the team: You get to discuss stuff about your good and not so good side with a senior in a limited time. Obviously, they have seen more and probably have a first hand experience of how things work out at the end. This way they would be able to provide some precious advice (directly or indirectly) and that could make a lot of difference. I’m telling you, I’ve received some of the best advice in these 5 minute talk while receiving feedbacks. The advice is not very profound at first (that’s why I always go inside with a pad) but when you sit down and pay attention, those small things starts to make big difference.
You get to resolve conflicts: Sometimes, while providing feedback you get to know about the complete story. Maybe you thought of something about someone based on some incident and then you provided this as the constructive feedback to the other person. There is a chance to explore this further and to get to know the mindset. This helps in team building and resolving conflicts. It has happened with me too. I gave constructive feedbacks to my colleagues and got to know their thought process. This enabled me to better understand their ways of working and better align myself to make it smoother.
Conclusion
I can go on and on but I think you got the point.
If you are following the form based feedback practices in your team, I would encourage you to move away from it. Unfortunately, my org is following the form based feedback strategy and I plan to move away from it next week, atleast in my team 😀
Until next time.